6 Things Libertarians Need To Stop Doing

Libertarians are an interesting bunch. However we came to our ideology, most of us are pretty sharp compared to our statist countrymen. We seem to be relatively immune to cognitive dissonance, or how would we have cast off years of government propaganda and social pressure to embrace, fully, the ideals of individual liberty? We’re typically far more informed about politics than those who are still stuck in the liberal/conservative paradigm. We’re unselfish about advocating liberty even if we recognize that if our ideals were accepted widely, it might mean that we’d have to change jobs, or start paying for the services that the government provides. We genuinely care about the plight of our fellow man, so much so that we have thoroughly investigated how we can help them, and we’ve concluded that casting off our chains and rejecting violence and coercion is the way to go. Even minarchists and classical liberals are great folks, despite how vehemently we can disagree from time to time. I’ve said before that if the debate were between minarchists and anarcho-capitalists, we’d live in a pretty awesome world.

That said, I find that libertarians can sometimes engage in behaviors that are destructive to their cause, and we’d do a better job of bringing our message to the world if we stopped doing these things. In no particular order:

Abandoning Our Principles For Pet Causes

I see this one all the time. Libertarians are usually the most intellectually consistent thinkers out there. Our philosophy is airtight. Don’t hurt anyone, don’t take their stuff, and no one is exempt. Pretty simple. But every once in a while, some of us forget it all when we’re talking about a cause that’s close to our hearts. GMOs. Gay marriage. Animal cruelty. ISIS. Drug prohibition. Machine guns. Child welfare. Abortion. Immigration. It’s as if someone cracked the door and our ability to reason fled like a skittish cat. Sure, non-aggression is great most of the time, but this issue right here is too important to be left to the free market! You can’t have these businesses running around poisoning us! ISIS would be marching through the streets of Sioux Falls! Suddenly we’re willing to abandon any notion of voluntary interaction and free market solutions. You know, the ones we advocate so vigorously when we’re talking about other people’s pet causes, and heaping opprobrium upon them for demanding statist solutions? Yeah, those principles. Free markets work. No, statist solutions do not work, and your cause is not exempt. When you do this, you’re only different from Republicans and Democrats in degree, not style. They just support statist solutions for a few more problems than you do. Stop it.

Being Conspiracy Theorists

Now, before you start typing off your screeds about Building 7 and posting YouTube videos, let me start by saying this. Suspicion of everything the government does is a good thing. We’re wise to suspect the worst of government. And if good evidence and sound logic lead us to unsettling conclusions, we have to face that head-on. Furthermore, when I say conspiracy theories, I’m talking about the ones that are way off the map. Chemtrails, 9/11, Bilderberg, anything coming from Alex Jones, etc. This kind of goes back to the first point, where it seems like libertarians are eager to forget the hard study and reasoning they did to arrive at their current ideology which rejects aggression by anyone. Suddenly it’s just ok to engage in wild speculation when we’re talking about 9/11. For some reason, the government which is too incompetent to run a mail service can pull off a flawless operation which would have to involve tens of thousands of conspirators with no leaks? Puh-lease.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m wrong about any conspiracy if it’s proven to be real, but here’s another problem. Even if there were a conspiracy by the government to spray us with chemicals from airplanes or explosively demolish the World Trade Center, the people who believe these theories would be the last to discover the plot. They think they’ve got their evidence, and what’s more, they don’t know what good evidence is or where to look for it, and they wouldn’t recognize it if they saw it. That’s right, it’d be skeptics, scientists, and investigators that would find the evidence. Not the wild-eyed theorists.

Besides, who needs more evidence that governments are murderous, criminal organizations? They brag about their crimes in press conferences. Republicans and Democrats debate how many crimes to commit, and the degree of perniciousness of these crimes. They don’t discuss ceasing their parasitism or their treachery. The debate is over the degree to which they should do these things. There are so many examples of real crimes that are beyond dispute which we can point to as proof of the wickedness of the Leviathan State, why invent new ones? The State is pure evil, and it needs to go. The politicians are guilty of mass murder, and that is without question.

Lastly, presenting weak evidence and sloppy arguments for imaginary atrocities makes you look like a crackpot. And we hang out with you, so we get lumped in with you. It’s much easier to dismiss solid arguments for liberty when a statist can say “oh well you’re one of them, so you’re crazy and I won’t waste my time with you.” You hurt the cause of liberty when you make us all look like crazies, and we’d appreciate it if you stopped doing that.

Being Fat, Socially Awkward Neckbeards

I was going to add being anime-loving fedora racks to that description, but felt it might make for a cumbersome title. This goes along with not embarrassing the rest of us. We’re trying to advocate a stateless society over here, where your compensation is commensurate with your ability to satisfy customer preferences, but it’s hard not to chuckle imagining some of you bucking hay or hanging drywall. And some of you look like you couldn’t tell a circular saw from a wrench if you got two tries at it. To the Joe-Six Packs working hard to feed their families, you look like a clueless weirdo who has no life experience, and they’re probably puzzled as to why a guy who would probably starve to death in a stateless society is advocating one. To the posh liberal college crowd, you’re the guy whose dorm was floor to ceiling gaming equipment and reeked of Cheetos, Mountain Dew, and body odor. To them, you must’ve been rejected for dates too many times, now you’re just lashing out at society.

If this offends you, you’re exactly the person who most desperately needs this advice. Try having a conversation that isn’t about the Federal Reserve. Go outside. It’s refreshing.

Telling People to Just Go Read Rothbard

It’d be great if everyone read For A New Liberty in high school, because in the course of a generation there wouldn’t be public high schools anymore. Unfortunately, people don’t have that kind of time, and even if they did, statist ideals have been drilled into their heads their entire lives. It didn’t happen overnight for you, and it’s not going to happen overnight for them. People are always trying to push an author on their friends and associates. To them, you’re just another person pushing yours. Murray Rothbard might as well be Joel Osteen in that regard. At best, they’ll nod politely and say “sure, I’ll check him out.” Newsflash: they aren’t going to check him out. You didn’t make them want to learn more.

I understand what a Sisyphean task spreading the word of liberty can be. You are going to have to explain how roads would work in an unhampered market over, and over, and over again. It’s boring. It’s annoying. You’re thinking of every person who asks as if they’re all the same person. How are they not getting this? You know what, just go read Rothbard and get back to me. Sorry, but if you do that, you just failed to convince them, and anyone else who might have been watching. You look lazy. If you’re going to engage with people, and try to debate with them, you’re going to have to distill the ideas down for them and present them yourself. If you’re not up to that task, just abstain from the debate altogether. Telling them to just go read Rothbard is like them telling you to Google refutations of your own arguments, and you need to stop it.

Being Mean

I have to admit this is a hard one for me. But let me tell you, the difference in the response you get is drastic when you drop the rage. Let them be the one that gets angry. Stick to your arguments. As much as I love this article, being mean to people is against our calling as Christians, and I think it’s counterproductive. You might convince a few onlookers when you smoke someone in a debate, but you just lost that person forever. You can still convince onlookers without resorting to viciousness, and you might actually reach the person you’re debating, too. You’d be surprised how much headway you can make by telling people you respect their opinion, highlighting that you know they don’t actually love extorting their fellow man, and that in the end we all want a better world to live in. I know it’s tough, but you have to stop being such a jerk.

Pretending That Watching Football Means You’re Uninformed

I see this one all the time. “Bread and circuses,” you say, as you tip your fedora and return to your dog-eared copy of Human Action. Oh wait you actually didn’t go back to reading Mises, because you have leisure pursuits that don’t involve studying economics, just like everyone else, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I watch football. I’m not uninformed. I’m not an unwashed plebiscite upon whom you can heap your vainglorious scorn. Once again, looking down your nose at leisure pursuits that don’t match your own, especially sports, does not make you look smart. No one hears your derision and makes the assumption that you while away your days in libraries buried underneath a mountain of scholarly treatises. No, actually, you’re the pasty weirdo again, who didn’t get picked for sports, who probably received a generous helping of beatings at the hands of your high school’s jocks, you’re a snob, and you’re lashing out. At least that’s what people assume. You’re not better than anyone just because you play disc golf and sip craft beer instead of pounding Budweisers and cheering on the Broncos.

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